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Everything posted by raeshlavik

Graphical content opinions are always a fascinating thing to watch because graphics, like art, is purely subjective. But there are a few things you can learn from the topic...
Hardcore PvPers rarely care about the graphics as it's all about the gameplay... The game could just be various multicolored cubes, but if the combat loop is phenomenal they'll play it religiously and theory-craft about it for hours and hours. If the game has decent graphics, and there's a hot pink thong that is best in slot - they'll wear it without a second thought because it's all about the win and the graphics are just the information conveyance needed to reach that win.
The more casual the player, the more they tend to grouse about graphical definition because they're more invested in the time between the game loops. They spend more time 'in the world' as it were because the game, for them, is more of an interactive media source and 3D chat room than a series of win conditions.
The thing is - it's a game. Historically, graphically amazing games aren't successful because too much effort is put into the number of nose sliders versus the depth of the game elements... WoW vs. EQ2 is a great example; EQ2 is still quite pretty to look at, but WoW is arguably the better 'game' when you look at all of the functional loops in it - and WoW still runs respectably on millions of low-end computers, which is money in the bank.
I personally think Crowfall is right on the mark graphically; it's visually distinctive enough that you can recognize it from a youtube thumbnail, but isn't totally style over substance like a BDO or Revelation Online. Also ACE's focus is on the gameplay elements over having a building full of artists creating assets, and this is refreshing; you don't see that too often anymore because developers know screen shots sell games... No one plays said game for more than 60-90 days, but they still bought it - and that's good enough for the end-of-year bonuses.

Me personally, I'm up for just about anything; wipe it all, wipe nothing - I'll adapt and overcome.
The discussion does bring up an interesting design element though... I was under the belief that Crowfall's 'mechanical' skill limitations were going to be super shallow to allow for the player's skill (or lack thereof) to be the prominent decider in a fight. But what I'm hearing is that it's really all about getting a blue+ vessel and a couple of months in the skill trees as that's an insurmountable mechanical advantage given the numerical disparity they grant.
At least, that's what it looks like based on this discussion.
If that's the case, I'm going to vote for wiping everything early and often to promote the player over the system.

As with any PvP game, I just browse the fight videos to stay on top of the meta... Hard to find a recent Crowfall PvP video that isn't a translucent blue winged dude skulking about and roflstomping 2-3 people at once. Over and over. For ten-ish minutes at a time.
Not that it's impacted me any; my PvP deaths tend to be delivered by running into a roving band of 5-10 enemies - as it should be.

Yeah, I get that the goal is to drive interdependence and I'm all for it - the only reason I brought it up is arrows specifically... Imagine if a dagger user had to purchase 3-400 daggers per hour due to interdependence.
I saw the quivers in the crafting list and that's a goal; I just need to find someone selling them as it takes three crafting disciplines to make them. And quivers apparently decay just like weapons, so I should probably buy a couple of them.
Or I just go back to confessor; one weapon that decays and no ammo requirement.

I've noticed that the crafting recipes now seem to be contained in the various crafting disciplines versus unlocked by gaining skill in the associated skill tree - even though the various skills in the trees mention the recipes they unlock.
Is this intended?
I ask because I've been running a Ranger, which by design burns through arrows like there's no tomorrow - but I cannot inherently make anything but basic trash arrows (which are actually worse than the arrows you get from the noob equipment vendor) because to get access to the arrow recipe requires slotting the woodcraft rune, and to make arrow heads to complete the recipe requires slotting the blacksmith rune... This means to make decent ammo that the class requires to function, requires not using any major class runes.
The workaround currently is to simply make crafting runes to make ammo, and then make combat runes for combat - destroying each in the process - but I'm guessing runes will be hard to find/make someday so it's not a long-term solution.
I suppose I could fire up a second account and have a backpack hamster I log into just to make ammo for my ranger every 2-3 hours - but that seems silly.
So, at least as far as a class that has a consumable goes, locking said consumable behind disciplines is kinda clunky - and I figured I'd bring it up just in case it's an oversight.

I think this is what the fealty trees are for...
Back in ye olden Shadowbane if you were a smaller group and wanted to play the city game, you had no real choice but to get in with a bigger group to have the muscle to defend it. And that made for some amazing game play when xXBr0F0rceXx decided to roll some 10-man city and in turn got erased by the continent's superpower.

I didn't see it as dedicated leveling as the levels were a byproduct of gathering stuff to make things with... I didn't pointlessly farm spiders; I killed enough to figure out the ranges, play with some of the abilities, and get enough hide to make a set of leather armor. Then I discovered that making food is the key to early success as it's easy to 'press F' on every mushroom you see while you're gathering stuff you actually need, you make way more food than you can use even with basic skill, and Malekai seems to really dig leftovers.
So in the process of Learn2Play I made level 15 on a templar, decided I didn't like running up and whacking things, and started over. But in getting to 15 on character #1 I made enough stuff to get character #2 to level 10 in about 5 minutes at Malekai's recycling center.
Then I heard over chat that I should have a mount; cue the great pig slaughter of 2018... I think I spent two hours just rinse-repeating pigs, but in doing this I made about 3000 gold and that financed character #3 to like level 20 as I wanted to try my hand at a healer...
20 to 29 has been purely through staying alive and learning the in's and out's of crafting. Malekai is easily my favorite mechanic in Crowfall, and I literally end each play session by finding ways to combine nonflammable stuff into flammable for fun and exp before logging out.
During all of this I think I've killed a hundred pigs, two dozen spiders, 5-6 R3/R4 things in the world, and exactly two R5 cats. All of my levels have come from simply playing the game versus specific "leveling".

I've not really played pre-alpha content since hungerdome - just to set the tone...
I leveled three classes in the last four days - almost entirely solo and in 2-3 hour sprints with the holidays and family here... Templar to 15, confessor to 25, and cleric to 28 - not been ganked once, not run into any issues getting mats to try my hand at making things (other than needing to ask if wells were actually in the game as I'd never seen one), fought in two sieges, taken countless outposts, had a few world-pvp encounters that were a hoot...
I guess from where I'm standing I just don't see the issue(s)?

The really big advantage I see to a passive level system over an active one is it equalizes things between people like me, who tend to log 50+ hours a week at work, have families and responsibilities - and the folks with pretty much unlimited free time. I can progress just as fast and not be left behind because of needing to adult.
One option I was thinking of was making trained skills part of the vessel, and therefore part of the import/export rules. This allows people who stick with a plan skill-wise over time to get some return on that, but with the cost of limitations on the sorts of campaigns they can join... For example, a campaign could allow only vessels under 100 hours of skill time to enter, or 100-200 hours, or whatever - which ensures all of the vessels in that campaign are in the same relative skill bracket.
This could also allow the skill trees to get considerably wilder with talents and abilities, because nothing would be an insurmountable advantage for the people in that campaign given the gating.
Potential problems with this are the additional database requirements to hold skill data for however many vessels are in the game at the same time.

Some of it is presentation. VN can be an insufferable font of buzzword-laden 'leet gamer as he talks down to the unskilled plebes of the forum - though I don't think anyone has convinced him to put his talk to the test in-game yet.
I'm another one who generally keeps him muted, but again he made some good posts recently, so it was time for the yearly sampling.
And yeah, I think ACE will try just about anything as a ruleset if people ask for it, but given that friendly fire has been shot down for a few reasons, (least of all the lack of melee mitigations that no one ever mentions) - this was, as Kraken mentioned, an argument vortex.

Ahh. Yeah, I can see that.
In general though, of all the developers/publishers I've interacted with over the years, ACE is hands-down the most open with their fans and players. It's pretty amazing really.

I need to check, but I'm pretty sure there's no NDA on the backer forum. There is a standing 'please don't record on the test server because stuff be broken, yo', but I've never seen an NDA.
Let me go look, and I'll report back.
Yeah. Just a note from Tyrant stating the reason for the backer forum is to allow a more direct Q&A is all there is. They even make a video monthly with a lot of the Q&A that goes on in there.

Actually, the problem is that your ability to miss a point is the very fabric of legend around here. When you can wrap your head around there being more to the game than the combat mechanics, we might actually have a discussion about PvP on our hands...
Ahh, yes - the "throne war simulator" with it's reliance on player made everything, market dynamics, sociopolitical maneuvering, supply chain management, and many-month long campaign coordination is totally not within the spectrum of game I enjoy. Thank you for taking the time to tell me my preferences. Much appreciated.
See, this is the point you valiantly avoid; contrary to your extremely narrow focus on "my dude hits your dude" there are many kinds of PvP and Crowfall contains several varieties... Which is the point you continually miss when folks try to talk to you about this.
Your constant many-year quest to make mano-e-mano deathmatching the focus of Crowfall does nothing but illustrate that you don't really get the bigger picture of the game, which is why people mock you in these threads. The sum-total of Crowfall is not, and never has been (at least in everything I've seen - up to and including the investor documents) any sort of solo-artist one-on-one e-sport like you seem to think it should be.
This is not to say there cannot be a rule-set where everyone shows up naked and the last person standing is the winner; but this rule-set won't do diddly for the overall game if nothing from that rule-set feeds back into the other systems such as the aforementioned player made everything, market dynamics, sociopolitical maneuvering, supply chain management, and many-month long campaign coordination.
Leaderboard combat for the sake of leaderboard combat simply won't run the rest of the game - and that's the point a lot of people keep trying to impress upon you.
Again, your personal bias not only blinds you to the reality of what is going on around you, but makes you a bit of a jerk in the process. As I illustrated above (which you will probably valiantly avoid again), my 'natural tastes' are more in-line with the overall design of Crowfall than I think you like to admit, because there is way more to the game than simply bashing each other over the head for internet points.
Yes, there can be lots of different rule-sets, but a rule-set cannot be what the game is not. "Competitive" combat can happen, sure, but it will (more than likely) never be the sole focus because the game is designed for factions/guilds interacting with a lot of systems to be successful as a group. "Competitive PvP" will (more than likely) be entire guilds fighting over things, "Leaderboards" will be successes measured in months.
If this doesn't sound like fun for you, you might be in the wrong place.
Oddly, the initial rule-band offering for the kickstarter was "the dregs"; for those who don't know this is low to zero import, no-faction, everyone is naked, FFA Crowfall... About as hardcore as Crowfall gets. If people are so afraid of this, why then did the Kickstarter bring in double what ACE was looking for?
I don't think anyone is "terrified of giving hardcore PvPers options"... I mean, have you played against any of the people on this forum? I can name ten, right now, who will drive you like a tent peg in straight up combat.
I think what it is, is you can't see beyond the immediate 'leet skill ceiling' momentary fight to the bigger picture where "hardcore PvPer options" must include conditions that support the other two thirds of the game. Insanity-Mode Crowfall simply has to include gathering, crafting, sieging, etc - because that's most of the game.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.
This is irony...
In that mentality, chess is the same as D&D is the same as PUBG is the same as poker; all are players versus other players, right?
The problem is, they are totally different things that appeal to different people. Twitchy shooter people may not like Crowfall's PvP - this is fine, they are not the same thing. MOBA warriors who bank on playing pre-gen characters may not like having to actually create a character in D&D - which is also fine, they are not the same thing.
Where the problem comes in is when a fan of (A) decides that there needs to be more (A) in (B) because (insert generalization about market, players, or [current year] here).
I'm a huge fan of 4x games (which are PvP) because I'm a tactician and I crush people with supply chains, market manipulation, and diplomatic agreements. But I also despise shooters (also PvP) because I don't enjoy jumping around, circle strafing everything, and they have entirely too much rinse and repeat.
The difference is I don't head over to The Shooter Forum and complain that there's not enough 4X in it...
So your generalization is false. PvPers like good PvP that interests them.
And unfortunately I need to head to work. So that's about all I have time to refute.

Not really. There's no real hardware ID that can't be easily spoofed.
The best option is to not allow cheating in the first place with proper design and code. For an example of how to do everything wrong with regard to cheating an MMO, read up on "The Division".

Is it only me that completely and totally disregards someone as soon as they use the term 'carebear'?
Anyway, defining PvP by the games that contain it is like defining art by the medium in use - sure it's art, but what kind of art?
Most of the PvP games touted here are either MOBAs or scenario shooters, which don't apply to Crowfall's design... if you actually isolate the PvP mode (not the general game loop, but the specific PvP modality) in an actual MMORPG, you'll find it to be very comparable to Crowfall's intent.
Crowfall does mix things up a bit by adding emphasis to the duration of the PvP and the involvement of the team/guild though. Most MMO-based PvP is very short attention-span and very lone-wolf; the win-condition is attained very quickly (open-world or arena (1v1, 3v3, 5v5) conflicts are over in minutes, MOBA-style "battleground" matches are generally over in under an hour, longer RvR scenarios run maybe a week before the static reset, etc.) and the only time you need to rely on someone else is if the win-condition requires people to stand somewhere for a time to achieve it.
Crowfall wants to run PvP engagements over months, utilizing ever-changing environments, and the game design demands group participation because the win-condition requires building/destroying things over the duration.
The one PvP game I've not seen anyone mention by way of comparison is Eve Online, which is funny because it's the closest to Crowfall's design... Which as a 'hardcore PvP MMO' has been ticking along nicely since 2003 - and the biggest complaint it has is the universe needs periodic resets to dethrone BoB (who dethroned themselves, but that's a tale for another time)... Which, oddly enough, Crowfall does.
So, sure, dream up new rule-sets that you think people will like, but try to refrain from the hyperbole that the mythical everyone stands with your singular opinion.

The best anti-cheat is simply to never trust the client and use server data as authoritative... They did this early on.
The second-best is to have strong encryption on the data stream to prevent tipping your hand - pretty sure they did this too.
The third-best is to generate unique UUIDs for every item in the game that can be placed in inventory, because this makes it trivial to detect duplication. Not sure if they did this.
Finally you get to the typical 'anti-cheat' system which tends to be a utility that runs on the client and watches application memory for injection. If you did option 1 through 3 above, you don't really need this.

I've not really noodled into it, but so far it looks like the passive systems garner, at best, a 10% increase in the base numbers and some crafting unlocks... 10% is not exactly an insurmountable advantage for the proverbial 'noob' to overcome.
Now - while I'd like the passive skill system to offer more depth and options for individualization, with more depth and options comes more cliff for new players to overcome. If the goal is to not offer any real insurmountable advantage for having been playing for years when compared to someone just starting out, there cannot really be anything "good" locked behind a gate of time. For if there is 'good stuff' to be had, anyone who does not have it is at a mechanical disadvantage and will whine incessantly.
A possible solution is to once again borrow from Eve; some sort of time multiplier subject to diminishing returns. In Eve you can get egregiously expensive implants that shorten the time-to-skill - but the detractor is that implants are destroyed when you are... So they're great for getting up to speed in a safe area, but tend to be too expensive for general use and the diminishing returns as you get into 14+ day trains makes them fairly useless beyond a certain point.
Just a thought.

Another no vote on proximity chat.
Unmoderated voice tends to devolve to 'the loudest in the room wins'... That and everyone+dog has Discord for the low, low price of free. And Discord has the option for someone to ride shotgun on it to prevent it from becoming it's own special level of hell...
In-game voice services generally only have one option; turn it off - which is what most sane people do.
Now, I'm willing to meet half-way; perhaps something like Vivox integrated for the EKs (with essential per-user server mute) would be handy as that's a more controlled environment. Though I plan to just have some Discord channels for the EK (market, RP, C&C, etc), so I'm not sure if something like Vivox would actually get used.

Point of reference; we crashed the server over the holidays which exposed a nice bug, and they rolled a fix for it really quick. That was a legit issue with something that was quickly locatable and fixable. So things can (and will) happen quickly when they can.
Part of the bug -> fix slowdown is that when dealing with untrained testers one person's end of the world the game will never work abandon all hope showstopper bug is another person's minor annoyance. And some "bugs" reported are due to systems that aren't implemented yet, other "bugs" are simple misunderstandings of game systems, and yet other "bugs" are so poorly documented that exploratory surgery has to happen to figure it out... This means that things we see have to be analyzed and prioritized by someone inside the dev loop, and that takes time.
Crowdsourced QA is cheap, but slow for this reason. You get a ton of data for no real expense, but then you need someone to curate it into actionable intelligence.

Speaking as a games QA guy IRL - testing is pretty boring... You don't know what fun is until you're on hour ten of negative testing the same broken assets in Barbie Dream Castle, on a Saturday, with no building AC... Or on step 500 of 2300 for an XBox certification pass and if you have to look at a config menu one more time you might just jump out a window.
We're testing/stressing everything 'new' in the patch notes (race/class split, new harvesting systems, new race, new class, changed skill trees, combat tuning, etc, etc.) ... And it's clearly netting some input given the 200 odd posts in the bug thread.
I think the re-do on the 5.3.4 Tyranny map is just because there was a couple of weeks of holiday mixed in there where not a lot happened at ACE... If I'm guessing.